This invention relates to heat generation in general and more particularly to heat generation by means of heat pumps and to the system design of heat pump installations.
Presently used, customary heat pump installations operate, as a rule, with three loops: A brine loop on the heat source side, a refrigerant loop in the compression process and a heating medium loop on the consumer side. While water is used as the heating medium, particularly on the consumer side, fluoro-hydrocarbons are preferably used in the compression process. These, however, are at the limit of their applicability at temperatures of somewhat above 90.degree. C. and can therefore not be used for high-temperature heat pumps with heating temperatures of 100.degree. to 120.degree. C. Furthermore, in the known installations, at least two heat exchangers are required for separating the different loops (DE-AS No. 26 26 468).
Starting from a heat pump installation in which a heat collector designed as an evaporator, a compressor and at least one heat consumer are arranged in an open or closed refrigerant loop, it is an object of the present invention to design the heat pump installation, from a system point of view, in such a way that it operates with an efficiency comparable to that of three-loop heat pump installations and can also be used for the generation of heating temperatures above 90.degree. C. with a modest equipment cost.